The Cost of Living

I’m still experimenting with upkeep costs for my fantasy campaign.

Based on the costs in the Savage Worlds Fantasy Gear Toolkit, and assuming three meals per day, food and accommodation would cost:

• $270 per month for someone living cheaply (cheap meals, room shared with 5 others)
• $390 per month for the average character (good meals, shared double room)
• $780 per month for someone living well (feasts, private rooms)

So, starting wealth being roughly one month’s upkeep still seems about right, once you allow for entertainment (all right, ale and whores then), ammunition, spell components and so on. It also matches $1 being roughly one copper penny historically, but there’s only one of my players who might know that, and he won’t care, so I’ll leave $1 as one silver Moon.

Where I’ve been going wrong, I think, is in charging PCs this much one per session – once per adventure seems more reasonable, since an adventure typically covers only a few days of game time but can take 3-5 sessions to complete.

However, to discourage people leading a string of ponies around behind them (The Warforged, I’m lookin’ at you), I shall charge them the "living cheaply" rate for each horse as well.

Review: The Dreamers Awaken

This 64 page book (or PDF, in my case) is the fourth episode in the Kith’takharos series, by Dave Pryzybla and Michael Galligan, published by White Haired Man. The Savage Worlds version, which is my topic for today, is designed for 4-6 Veteran characters.

CONTENT

The book starts with a full-colour map of the Kith’takharos region, some narrative fiction, and an explanation of the authors’ philosphy and purpose of the scenario. It then moves on into the usual background for the GM section.

The Dreamers Awaken builds on previous Kith’takharos adventures. Personally, I’d play them in sequence, but I think you could miss out the first two easily enough. It would be harder to drop players in who haven’t completed The Nine Towers, but possible using one of the adventure hooks provided.

The scenario itself is in seven scenes, so would probably last two or maybe three sessions of play. By now the PCs should know from earlier episodes that once a race of civilised reptile men lived in the region, and that their civilisation vanished. By the end of The Dreamers Awaken, they will know what happened to that civilisation.

The essence of the adventure is to find a dungeon, explore all three levels, and emerge victorious with the knowledge needed to begin the next adventure in the series, as well as some useful relics.

FORMAT

As usual for White Haired Man products, this make good – and extensive – use of colour. Different types of text are pulled out in different colours, and there are a number of illustrations to use as player handouts.

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

Use layers in the PDF to make it more printer-friendly.

Duplicate, or collate, the handout illustrations at the back of the book. As it stands, I need to either cover up bits of it and show the players only what they need, or print out a second copy and chop it up.

It would be clearer to me if the "Place" sections in this and earlier adventures appeared in the right place in the adventure; pulling them out to a previous section confuses me, I’m afraid.

CONCLUSIONS

One of the staples of the genre; kick down the door, kill the monsters, and steal their loot. Underneath that, however, is the ongoing story of what happened to the dungeon builders, which I’m quite interested in by this point.

Overall rating: 2 out of 5 on its own, but 4 out of 5 as part of the sequence. It depends heavily on the previous adventures – nothing wrong with that, but if you like Kith’takharos, this is not the place to start.

Review: The Nine Towers

The third Kith’takharos adventure, Savage Worlds version.

At 84 pages, this is the biggest of the Kith’takharos adventures. Written by Dave Przybyla and Michael Galligan, and aimed at 4-6 Seasoned PCs.

CONTENT

The book begins, like its predecessors, with a colour map of the region, an explanation of how and why the authors design adventures, and an outline of the scenario, which has 10 events or encounters. The introductory fiction is quite a bit larger than in the earlier works. There are four different adventure hooks to draw in the players, depending on whether they played through the earlier scenarios or are fresh into the village. Personally, I think it would work better with a group of players who have already gone through the first two adventures.

Given that they are mentioned on the front cover, it’s probably not too much of a spoiler to say that this episode revolves around a vanished civilisation of reptile men. The PCs will cross swords with outlaws, investigate reptilian ruins, discover an interesting (if dangerous) way to move around the region quickly, talk to the undead, and – if they’re good, and lucky – recover a lost artefact.

The adventure has a linear beginning and end, but has some scope for free will in the middle. This is part of the reason the adventure is long, as descriptions of what the PCs find are conditional on what has happened before. (Also, there are a number of ruins to explore, rather than just one as in earlier installments.)

The GM also has a section explaining who the ruin-builders were, and what happened to them. This includes notes on their magic and floor plans for a typical ruin, along with detailed contents of each of the nine the PCs may encounter. I applaud the inclusion of a one-page cheat sheet summarising the location, purpose and properties of each.

There are six pregenerated characters in case your players don’t have any of their own, and a few adventure seeds.

FORMAT

At the risk of repeating myself…

Extensive use of colour throughout, which is not kind to my printer I fear. Full colour maps and diagrams; cream page background; green boxes for descriptions and blue ones for game mechanics; orange boxes for sidebars; pictures to use as player handouts.

Statistics for opponents are presented in a logical place within each encounter, and all the ones you need for a given combat are on a single page, or facing pages, so there’s very little page-flipping. This is a Good Thing and other publishers could learn from it.

SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS

There are a number of references to things (e.g. plants) explained on the White Haired Man website. I’d prefer to have these collated into a PDF file for easy download, and to be fair I understand the authors are working on this.

I’d prefer it if the PDF file used layers so that I don’t have to print the coloured background on every page.

CONCLUSIONS

This one reminded me a lot of the old Traveller adventure, Twilight’s Peak. I expect it to be much more exciting than the earlier two; watch out for the session writeups later in the year!

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Blood Loss

"You don’t need to know about the miracles of 21st century medicine. You need to know what to do when you’re bleeding to death in an alley somewhere." – Cyberpunk 2020.

This is the kind of thing I get up to when I’ve got time on my hands. It probably won’t get used much in play, because it moves away from the Fast, Furious, Fun aspect of Savage Worlds which I love so much; but having thought it through will help with my descriptions of combat.

Long ago, I briefly experimented with the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game. That was worthwhile, but as a result I decided diceless games are not for me, and moved on. The things that stuck with me afterwards, which I used in 2300AD for a while, were the wound descriptions – in a game with no hit points or saving throws, one conveys to players how badly damaged they are by describing their symptoms.

In an idle moment, I wondered whether something similar would be useful, or at least possible, for Savage Worlds. It turns out that it’s definitely possible, although the jury is still out on useful. Specifically, I can match wound levels to the symptoms of hypovolemic shock, which is the default assumption for EMTs treating trauma victims. Nothing like gaming for broadening your horizons.

Shaken. Acquiring this status from physical damage corresponds to losing up to a litre of blood, perhaps 10-15% of your blood volume, a little more than the average blood donation. I’ve done that, so I speak from experience when I say that looks like a lot if it gets spread over your clothes, and it is common, but not inevitable, to feel a bit light-headed, weak and wobbly, which may partly explain the game effects. Your heart rate may increase a little, or it may not. However, all you need in the way of treatment is a nice cup of tea and a sit-down. (As well as being the all-purpose cure for everything in British culture, the tea helps restore your circulation volume.)

One Wound. You’ve lost up to 30% of your blood volume, call it 1 to 1.5 litres. Typically you’re now agitated (-1 to skill rolls), breathing faster to offset the loss of oxygenation, and your skin is cold and clammy as your body reserves blood for the important core organs – skin and muscle begin to die after 4-6 hours without blood, and most internal organs can manage 45-90 minutes, but the brain and lungs are toast after 4-6 minutes, so this shift makes sense.

Two Wounds. Loss of 1.5 to 2 litres, 30-40% of your blood volume. That’s nearly half a gallon in old money. You’re breathing hard and fast now; your heart rate is up, but it can’t compensate for the loss of blood, so your blood pressure is falling. The body protects your brain’s blood flow as a priority, but it can’t cope by this stage, so you’re confused (-2 to skill rolls), and may get tunnel vision or greyed-out vision. In the real world, blood transfusions are called for.

Three Wounds. You’ve lost more than 40% of your blood, more than 2 litres for most people. This is life-threatening. Your blood pressure has crashed, your heart rate is over 140 beats per minute as it tries (and fails) to compensate, your respiration has collapsed, you’re lethargic and while you may still be thinking straight it’s only in short bursts (-3 to skill rolls). Your skin is pale and cold, and you’re quite likely to black out.

Incapacitated. Now we’re into irreversible shock. You get all of the above, but more so; you have a sense of impending doom, and rightly so. (Nothing induces this in players more than making them roll on the injury table.) In the real world, even if you survive the initial trauma, you could die from it any time in the next few days.

People in great physical shape (high Vigour, Brawny Edge, I’m lookin’ at you) may compensate for blood loss more effectively, which I guess is why they are harder to wound in the first place. Note, though, that bigger people have more blood to lose, but bigger veins and arteries to lose it through, so the rate of loss is pretty much constant, hence why they don’t have more Wounds.

Healing Rolls. The priority is to stop further blood loss by applying pressure, tourniquets, etc. If the setting technology level and party equipment allows it, anyone with actual Wounds gets oxygen and/or an IV drip, and possibly a PASG (the medical version of a pilot’s g-suit). Regardless, the patient is laid down, kept warm and protected from weather, and gets plenty of fluids to restore circulation volume.

Thankfully, I’ve led a sheltered life, and I have no formal medical training; so I’ll listen respectfully to corrections from anyone who has "seen the elephant".

Review: Savage Worlds Deluxe Explorers’ Edition

There is now a digest-sized version of Savage Worlds Deluxe, and at ten bucks I thought it would be worth picking up the PDF from the newly-opened Pinnacle web store, in case it is more legible on my Kindle (which it is).

CONTENT

As far as I can tell, the content of the Deluxe Explorers’ Edition exactly matches that of the ordinary Deluxe Edition (which I reviewed here).

FORMAT

Where the normal Deluxe Edition has 161 pages, each 8.5″ x 11″, the digest-sized one has 194 pages, each 6.5″ x 9″. This seems to have been accomplished by shrinking the artwork and headers (and a few paragraphs) and reformatting the pages; there are slightly more lines per page in the smaller book, and slightly fewer words per line.

I only really noticed that in a few places; the Attack Options Summary is now a two-column page, and the Powers and Bestiary sections, where more of the entries are now split over consecutive pages.

The PDFs are 15MB and 24MB respectively – I’m not sure why a 20% increase in page count means a 50% increase in file size, but unless (like me) you are a former Assembler programmer, you are probably not as obsessed about file size as I am. (When ah were a lad, you were lucky t’get computer wi’ 8KB o’ memory f’t'programmes, and bulk storage were 500 foot o’ paper tape. You try an’ tell that t’t'youth o’ today, an’ they won’t believe yer.)

Both use PDF layers, so things like the full-colour page background can be suppressed for printing. Unfortunately I haven’t figured out how to suppress page background on the Kindle, but that is a function of the PDF reader, not the document.

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

I’d still like to see a Kindle version of the rules. My guess is that the text itself would only be about 600KB, and the rest of it is graphics.

CONCLUSIONS

My overall rating for the game system is, like the content, unchanged: 5 out of 5.

The advantages of this edition are the smaller size (easier to stuff into a flight bag or a large pocket) and the lower price (the paperback digest version is cheap enough that I can get each player a copy; the hardback full-size one is too expensive for me to do that).

As far as the Kindle goes, the Deluxe Explorers’ Edition is easier to read on it – in landscape format, a Kindle screen is about 75% of the printed page width, and covers half a page nicely.

Review: The Missing Harvesters

The second Kith’takharos adventure. (I’m using the Savage Worlds versions, by the way.)

This is a 50 page PDF, by Dave Przybyla and Michael Galligan. The Savage Worlds version is aimed at 4-6 Novice or Seasoned PCs.

CONTENT

The book begins, like Well-Met in Kith’takharos, with a colour map of the region, an explanation of how and why the authors design adventures, and an outline of the scenario, which has 10 events or encounters. There are three different adventure hooks to draw in the players, depending on whether they played through the earlier scenario or are fresh into the village.

As in the first scenario, someone has gone missing in the swamp, and the PCs are hired to find them, and what happened to them, discreetly. This leads them into conflict with swamp wildlife and outlaws, and into a small dungeon. The puzzles and traps in the scenario are unforgiving, so if the players don’t pay attention during their briefing and act cleverly in the dungeon, they will find things difficult, although with patience and magical healing they should prevail.

The adventure is linear, and assumes that the players and GM follow the story in the sequence presented. That’s fine with me, but Your Mileage May Vary, so be aware.

FORMAT

Extensive use of colour throughout, which is not kind to my printer I fear. Full colour maps and diagrams; cream page background; green boxes for descriptions and blue ones for game mechanics; orange boxes for sidebars; pictures to use as player handouts. Again, I don’t think I really need a full-page, full-colour image of a small boat.

Statistics for opponents are presented in a logical place within each encounter, and all the ones you need for a given combat are on a single page, or facing pages, so there’s very little page-flipping. This is a Good Thing and other publishers could learn from it.

SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS

There are a number of references to things (e.g. plants) explained on the White Haired Man website. I’d prefer to have these collated into a PDF file for easy download, and to be fair I understand the authors are working on this.

I’d prefer it if the PDF file used layers so that I don’t have to print the coloured background on every page.

It would be more logical for me if the dungeon layout and writeup were after the point in their trip where the PCs find it, rather than some pages before.

CONCLUSIONS

Together with Well-Met in Kith’takharos, this introduces the factions and themes the PCs will face in the campaign as it continues; the Transit Guild, the Order of the Jade Leaf, reptile men, and outlaws.

I was a bit disappointed that the mission was the same as the previous adventure, but once they’re into it, the players will find themselves taken off down a different track involving lost civilisations and poachers, so that’s a minor niggle.

My favourite part was the dungeon and its puzzles. I expect to have fun with that.

Rating: 3 out of 5. Does the job, but not as entertaining for me as some of the other episodes. More of those later…

Shadows of Keron Episode 12: The Uninvited Guest

Kenaton is a big city, and the players have been travelling towards it for months, so even if it isn’t the eventual destination, it deserves a couple of adventures. There are none specifically set in Kenaton, and the few urban One-Sheets don’t look suitable. OK then, what do we know about Kenaton?

Reading through the relevant sections of Beasts & Barbarians and Citadel of the Winged God, I see that Kyros City and Kenaton have been allies for a long time, and that both cities provide troops to the Golden Guard, whose aim is to make the Gold Route (which follows the Sword River) safe for trade. This is a land and river route from the northern countries to Kenaton, where it crosses the Brown Sea to Lhoban. Kenaton is thus both a seaport and a major trade hub.

That’s it. Actually, that’s about the level of detail I like; enough to get me thinking but not prescriptive or over-detailed. I can do pretty much what I like, and it’s about time Jughal the Restless came back; he shouldn’t give up until the party either kill him permanently or give him the gems, in which case there will be tears before bedtime. I imagine he is tracking them because of some mystical connection to the gems, possibly he can see through them – yes, I like that. So, Jughal knows that The Warforged is carrying the Eyes on his person.

Jughal’s objective is to recover the Eyes, and thus gain control over his own Weakness. If he can get them without violence, so much the better – less risk to him that way. He knows of several treasure caches and will happily trade one or more of them for the Eyes; after all, once he is completely invulnerable, he can always get them back.

He is a lich, so his main strength is that he knows almost all the powers in the book. I decide that he can see through the Eyes, and knows their direction and distance at all times, but he can’t hear through them. So, he has to follow along behind the group, which limits his chances to lay traps. Once they reach Kenaton, however, and settle in to trade, relax and so forth, he can act – but he will still act swiftly as he doesn’t know their plans.

He has three basic strategies available to him; deceit (persuade the party to give him the gems), stealth (steal them), and brute force. Of course he could just ask nicely, but where’s the fun in that? Someone this old and sneaky knows enough about power to kick off all three approaches and go with the one that bears fruit first. I decide to expose the party to the visible signs of his plans, then wing it, letting the session go wherever they wandered. It’s a long time since I’ve run a completely improvised session, wouldn’t want to get rusty.

-o0o-

Resting up in Kenaton, the group sells off unwanted possessions and enjoys the comforts of city life for a while. They decide they are staying at the Headless Chicken Inn, part of a chain stretching across the continent, which amuses me.

Ahmed the Jeweller, whom they befriended while selling off gems, asks to meet them and tells them he has been ordered by a mysterious stranger to make a pair of matching ruby earrings, quickly, or die. The rubies he describes are an exact match for the Eyes of Jughal. Can the party help him find such rubies, or alternatively intervene with his patron? As it happens, they can.

When a thug from the Thieves’ Guild comes around to check on progress, they show him the Eyes and offer to sell him The Warforged (clearly some kind of automaton). He sets up a meeting with the Guildmaster for the following day.

While The Warforged guards the jeweller’s shop, the others go into the seedy side alleys, looking for information on the Guild. In addition to that, which doesn’t help them much, they learn that someone has dug up a few dozen bodies in the city cemetery. Nessime goes there and discovers evil runes carved on the tombs, then alerts the local Temple of Hulian, who respond by girding their loins and staking out the cemetery.

Something sneaks into the jewellers’ that night and tries to cast a spell on The Warforged, but fails.

Day 2, and at the meeting with the Guildmaster, the party learns that the mysterious stranger has offered the Guild 50,000 Moons to retrieve the rubies, which is far more than they are worth. The Warforged proves he has them, then offers to double that if the Guild will set up a meeting with the stranger. The Guild agrees.

That night, the whole party camp out in Ahmed’s shop. Something sneaks in, uses Puppet on The Warforged (he has a weakness, and it is his rubbish Spirit trait) to persuade him to hand over the Eyes of Jughal, then Teleport to escape. Unfortunately, the parting instruction to The Warforged is “kill them all”, which triggers a second Spirit save – this one, he makes, and as it is now raining, a humanoid figure can be seen limned in raindrops in the alley outside. The party charge into contact, firing ranged spells, and Shake their opponent; it is none other than Jughal the Restless, whose Invisibility drops when he is Shaken. He Teleports again, but The Warforged manages to snatch back the Eyes before he does so.

Day 3, and Nessime alerts the Temple to Jughal’s presence. They are not angry, but very, very disappointed that the party released Jughal from his tomb. Nessime spends the day being debriefed before the Temple sends runners off in all directions to raise the alarm.

Meanwhile, The Warforged and Gutz meet the Guild to tell them the deal is off. The Guildmaster explains that this means he is 150,000 out of pocket, and he would be happy to take that in cash. Immediately. This leads to an argument, and shortly thereafter, missile fire from rooftop archers who have The Drop on the party. However, it takes more than an arrow to drop The Warforged, and Gutz is happy not to be the primary target. Both sides retreat before things turn to melee.

The Guild is no longer the party’s friend.

That night, again the whole party camps out in the shop, and they are rewarded with a mass zombie assault during the small hours – Jughal is responsible for the raid on the cemetery, and has used it to raise some disposable troops. Blast spells dispose of most of them, but they are just a diversion, as Jughal Teleports inside the shop and unleashes a Fear spell on the party. This has no effect on Nessime or The Warforged, but Gutz has to spend a benny to avoid a fatal heart attack, and is Shaken for a number of rounds.

The Warforged returns the favour, but zombies are immune and Jughal has enough Spirit to shake it off. Jughal and The Warforged nod at each other, having established that Fear won’t work. Jughal next casts Puppet on The Warforged, takes the Eyes from him, and runs out.

The party pursues him into the night, whereupon he uses Fly to get up onto the rooftops. A lucky Bolt brings him down, and before he can recover (he’s out of bennies by this point) the party are upon him.

After much debate, they place the Eyes back in Jughal’s sockets, immobilising him. The liche is then dismembered, with his head (including Eyes) in the Temple at Kenaton, and other parts dispersed around the continent. The Warforged consents to this so long as he is paid rent for the use of the Eyes. Although disappointed by this, the Temple decides 5 Moons per week is a small price to pay for the continued existence of humanity, and so the deal is struck.

-o0o-

When next we see our heroes, they will have moved on to Syranthia, site of the Great Library. What could possibly go wrong?

Beasts & Barbarians Indiegogo

For the past couple of days I’ve been thinking, what I need is more One-Sheets or Savage Tales suitable for use in the Dread Sea Dominions – short adventures which would occupy a session each. There are a lot of One-Sheet adventures around, but most of them are for Deadlands, and I’ve found converting them harder than I expected. Ideally, I’d have enough that I could pick a suitable one from the pile for whatever group turns up on Saturday.

And lo, no sooner is the wish made than I see GRAmel has set up an Indiegogo campaign to fund Beasts of the Dominions, ten new monsters each with a Savage Tale attached.

I’ve pushed a few bucks their way, and if you’re minded to do the same, click on the link above sometime before June 12th.

The normal schedule will be resumed tomorrow.

Review: Well Met in Kith’takharos

This is the first in a series of adventures from White Haired Man, available for d20 or Savage Worlds. I’ve had my eye on these for a while, but recently it occurred to me that they would fit nicely into the Buffalo River delta on the Dread Sea Dominions map, thus extending my heavily-tweaked Beasts & Barbarians campaign.

The authors’ objectives are to produce small-scale settings and adventures, easily incorporated into any fantasy campaign; and to separate game mechanics from the plot and descriptions. A rules-agnostic version of the setting is available on the WHM website. I’ll review each adventure in turn, then close with a retrospective and overview.

This fellow is a 46 page PDF, by Dave Przybyla and Michael Galligan. The Savage Worlds version is aimed at 4-6 Novice PCs, and as well as being an adventure in its own right is intended to introduce players to the swamp, its natives, and Kith’takharos politics.

CONTENT

Kith’takharos Region is a swampy, inhospitable area which contains one village, nine ruins, and six reliable sources of fresh water. The region is about 20 x 28 miles, call it 550 square miles in old money; or if you prefer, 32 x 45 km, a bit over 1,400 square kilometres. That’s roughly the size of the Faroe Islands or Guadaloupe, about 20% bigger than Hong Kong. The small size of the region makes it extremely portable, easy to drop into any fantasy campaign.

The authors explain their design philosophy, provide an introduction, and outline the scenario, which consists of assorted setting information, narratives (a console gamer would call these cutscenes) and nine events (a D&D player would call these encounters); I reckon my group would take 2-3 sessions to complete the adventure.

This is followed by four potential adventure hooks, ranging from "seeking the rare plant that will heal your relative" to "oops, we missed the boat". Whichever one you choose, the PCs find themselves in the swamp village of Kith’takharos, and are quickly hired by one or more of the factions with an interest in finding a missing explorer. There’s a full-page colour map of the village, and narratives to set the scene – the local law explains constraints on the PCs’ behaviour; an experienced adventurer tells a tale which may be useful later, if the PCs remember it; and then the job offers begin. A local explorer is missing, and various parties are interested in what happened to him.

This leads us into the local political factions: Lady Salmissra, who strives to control trade in valuable swamp plants via the Order of the Jade Leaf, who amongst other things suppress poachers and smugglers; and the Transit Guild, one of those organisations which everyone knows is criminal in nature but somehow manages to avoid being prosecuted. The PCs are also likely to meet the Swamp Men, indigenous lizardfolk who live in the swamp.

The bulk of the adventure deals with tracking down the missing explorer, finding out what happened to him, and avoiding the same fate oneself.

FORMAT

There’s extensive use of colour throughout, and plenty of maps; GM and player maps of the region, a map of the village, a floor plan of an abandoned temple in the swamp; those are useful in running the adventure. There are colour images of various things which the GM is intended to show to the players at various points of the adventure; these vary in usefulness – I don’t think I needed a full-page colour illustration of a rowboat, for example, but I can see the value of some of them.

Narrative text and monsters are pulled out in differently coloured boxes. Each event opens with a paragraph explaining what other parts of the book are needed to run the event, and a brief description of what triggers the event, followed by notes on how to extend, shorten or omit the event, and its purpose in the adventure.

SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS

I’d prefer to download the rules-agnostic setting as a single PDF, rather than clipping various webpages. If I understand correctly, this PDF will be available soon.

It would be nice to have layers implemented in the PDF file, since 46 full-colour pages is slow and expensive to print.

CONCLUSIONS

It’s possible to run the adventure without having read the setting information on the WHM website, but I’d recommend you do glance through that first, it clarifies a number of points.

The adventure is well laid-out and seems easy to use. I look forward to running it; I understand though that an improved version is on the way, and I’m likely to get that before I actually run the scenario at the present rate of progress.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5.

Shadows of Keron Episode 11: Citadel Part 4 and Thieves in the Night

Citadel of the Winged Gods, Part 4

After a week off to reflect, the party decided that their tactical position was not good, and they should do something about it. Noticing that one side of the pyramid was devoid of tribesmen, they made a fighting withdrawal to that side, then turned and ran into the jungle, pursued Indiana Jones style by howling savages. A standard five round chase ensued, during which they nearly lost their native guide, Kiran, but managed to grab him and drag him off with them. Eventually losing the savages in the jungle, they settled down for a damp, cold night which they spent wondering what had happened to their companions.

In the morning, after a few minor setbacks, they found their way to the Lost City they have been looking for these past few sessions. Dodging arrows in the ruins led them to discover such survivors as there were, but their discussion was interrupted by Kumal the Smiling, their recurring nemesis, and a dozen Valk archers who have been trailing them through the jungle and looked decidedly the worse for wear. This was planned as the big climactic fight of the adventure, but ridiculously lucky dice rolls on Fear and Blast powers wiped out the Valk in a couple of rounds, before they could do any serious damage. All the Valk except Kumal the Smiling, that is.

Now, Kumal should be dead by now, but for some inscrutable reason of their own, the Dice Gods love him. He has been blown up, stabbed, thrown down a well, perforated with arrows, blown up again, stabbed again, and he just keeps on coming. I’m not even using any bennies on him. So, it should come as no surprise that one of the city’s guardian beasts carried him off to an uncertain fate. By this stage, he may have developed a grudge against the party. If he survives the guard beast – and you can imagine how tempted I am – I foresee a crusade for revenge on his part.

The party found sufficient loot for them to consider their time well spent. As I misread a paragraph in the adventure, this includes two giant fighting hawk eggs, since hatched. Oh well, never mind – I’m sure I can make them regret that.

Thieves in the Night

Since we finished early, I dragged out my emergency one-sheet and trimmed it to fit the remaining time. This was Thieves in the Night, also by Umberto Pignatelli, from Savage Insider #3.

This is an everyday tale of tomb-robbing folk, and venturing into a step pyramid in the minor Kyrosian city of Gilaska, the group emerged, more than somewhat bedraggled, heavy of purse and light of Wounds and bennies. While the Carnival at Nal Sagath uses the random card draw method to generate a dungeon, Thieves in the Night uses Beasts & Barbarians’ other approach, presenting a list of rooms and encounters in sequence. Since I skipped over half of these to fit into the time limit, I plan to respray the pyramid and use the rest of the encounters again later.

Lessons Learned

Athienne’s player wasn’t able to attend much of this adventure, which is a pity as she had all the right skills and could have taken a turn in the limelight. I need to think about how I can cope better with not knowing who is turning up to any given session; that suggests a swing away from multi-part adventures towards one-sheets, and possibly a return to the megadungeon concept.

I should also read the scenario more carefully in future to avoid burdening the party with too much treasure.

On the plus side, having a short spare scenario in the back pocket is a useful tool.